January 10, 2011

Every time we fly to Boston to visit Grams, she treats us to one of her signature dishes. The first time I visited during winter, she made her incredible veal marsala, and since then, I’ve had the pleasure of dining on her Ritz breaded chicken, roasted rack of lamb, another veal dish, and now her brisket. And because I’m still in Newton for a few more days, I decided it’s fitting that I feature one of these dishes.

I chose her roasted rack of lamb because it’s simple and quick but delicious and impressive for a romantic night in or for a dinner party. And because I took pictures of the beautiful rack when I made it before the New Year. And because, in the words of Drake (whose obnoxious song I only heard for the first time a few days ago and which has refused to leave my head ever since) I really think nobody does it better; I love the way she puts it together; oh it’s fancy huh; oh it’s fancy huh.

Side note: I won’t blame you if you go ahead and shoot me now for putting that into your head. (more…)

This Greek salad with lamb, tsatsiki (cucumber-yogurt sauce), and oven-baked cumin pita chips is not only healthy, but also the fastest, easiest, most delicious dinner ever – especially if you had a figurative ton of lamb’s meat left over from, oh, I don’t know, last week’s roasted leg of lamb, perhaps?

Last week’s roasted leg of lamb was delicious enough to finish in one sitting, had it not contained enough meat to feed an entire family or had we actually been a family of six and not a mere twosome. But at the meal’s end, I was left with approximately 2/3 of the original amount of lamb. Knowing that I had already sated my lamb cravings for the week, I set about dicing the meat. And then I did something that some of you will find horrific: I froze the diced meat.

Ordinarily, I would never have frozen the cooked meat of a succulently home-roasted leg of lamb (or any other already-cooked meat, really) … except chili. (But real chili takes a very long time, is meant for large batches, and holds up for quite a few months in the freezer – upon defrosting, it tastes even better, in fact.) But due to the outrageous amount of lamb already consumed and massive amount of lamb still to-be-consumed, there were only three options: (more…)

April 7, 2010

Looking for something to highlight all the amazing flavors and texture of that cherry-pistachio-cocoa powder couscous I recently raved about? Well, here it is: an easy peasy lemon squeezy recipe for roasted leg of lamb (except no lemon squeezing, please).

I’m a little ashamed to admit that I failed to take any pictures of the sliced meat. You see, while this baby was roasting in the oven, my hungry self had to endure the worst waiting game. First, I tried to distract myself by doing homework, but that didn’t work very well. I’m always looking for distractions from homework as it is (and this particular homework featured some very dense reading about corporate finance and the various details involved in financial statements), so the incredible smell of roasting lamb constantly drifting into my nose was a necessary and welcome distraction from homework, but not from my rumbly tummy.

So then I tried doing laundry. We had a nice big pile of it laying around anyway, so might as well exorcise the hauntingly delicious smell of lamb from my nostrils by taking a trip down the hall to the laundry room. (more…)